Looking back, it is no surprise that I had a false conversion. The cross of Christ, I never heard of it. No, not in church. I never heard a sermon on the message of the cross, until my first Easter sunday in a Word of Faith church. I found out that the message I did hear, was a recycled message that anybody could find online. The message was staged, and the pastor jumped down from the pulpit with a hop and stylish skip. He had, what Pam Sheppard calls a gimmick. The hop, the stylish skip, and the jumping from the pulpit, with a flourish might as well have been a stage show. The cross of Christ message the pastor gave never touched me. I sat there admiring his alligator shoes, and fancy pin stripe suit. Why? Because I was not saved then.

I thought I got saved while listening to a Benny Hinn broadcast. Benny Hinn called my name, he said ” You you are saved”. My Mom looked at me with glee, and led me into the sinners prayer. I felt a little sorry for sins, I felt good and I wondered what God would now give or do for me. The cross of Christ, the resurrection power, Godly sorrow and repentance were not found in me. It was a set-up from the devil. I had a false conversion. I had what Pam Sheppard has coined a ” counterfeit birth “.

What happened when I finally got saved for real? I did not get saved in a church. I got saved in my own bedroom. My son’s father died after being in a coma for about three days. During the period of his ill-health, and after years of abuse from him he was attending church. This man, who had been a problem to me for many years began apologizing left and right. At the time, I was what the church falsely labels backslidden. Pam Sheppard has taught us this truth, yet some refuse to receive it.

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My friends, there is no such thing as a backslidden Christian, for as the Apostle Paul says, in the Book of Hebrews 6:4,5,6 it is impossible.

It is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift to fall away and be renewed again. If they shall fall away, to renew themselves again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God AFRESH, and put him to an open shame.

So then, when you are truly saved there is no backsliding. If there is backsliding ,what we are saying is the cross of Christ, and message of the cross, did not take the first time. What kind of mess is that? Is Christ’s resurrection power so weak, that the knowledge of it fails the first time, but works if we hear it a few more times?

Anyway, there I was in sin and never saved from the get go’. Don’t get me wrong, we do grow in Christ, but if we are truly saved we do not return to total darkness and start drinking like a fish and fornicating like a champ. If we do, as I did, we were never saved in the first place.

Back to the story of how I got truly saved. My son was deathly sick and hospitalized. I realized that I was bitter towards him. I felt bad about that and begun to pray. I kept seeing a vision in front of me of the cross of Christ, I kept seeing Jesus on the cross and at first, did not know why.

As the days passed, I understood that I had never know Jesus at all. All I knew was a God who was going to give me ” stuff “. All I knew was a Jesus who was rich who would one day make me rich. Thanks to the Word of Faith church I had met ” The Fake Jesus ” who Pam exposes in one of book’s entitled the same.

I had pledged and made an unholy alliance with Satan. My story continues. As I shared my son’s father Brett was ill and I kept seeing the cross of Christ, and Jesus on the cross before me in vision. I had been praying about my own bitterness and reluctance to visit him. I called someone who reminded me of what Jesus had said on that cross. Jesus said, ” forgive them father, they know not what they do”. The word of Christ prompted me to visit Brett Sr. It was the day he had slipped into a coma. I went to his bedside. Kissed his hand and sung his favorite church songs. Kissed him on the forehead and told him I forgave him, and forgave myself. He passed away that night.

I was saved in my bedroom as the days progressed. I realized what a hypocrite I had been. I was never saved. How could I have been. I had returned to drugs, fornication and the world. The message of the cross never made a dent in me, I never heard it. When I did hear it once it was from an unsaved man posing as a pastor. I had looked death in the face because my son’s father died. I knew that if I died then, I would have gone into hell. But it was not hell itself that scared me. What frightened me, was that I would be totally cut off from God. I had fancied myself a spiritual person, a person who loved God and wrote Christian poetry. Those moments that I sat in my room, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was neither spiritual or saved. My so-called love for God was not there.

My life in church flashed before me. I had been a works salvation. A works salvation is a ” counterfeit birth “. I was churched, as Pam would say. I had been on church boards and committees and such, but I was unsaved. I had written fancy Christian poetry, dripping with fleshy sentiment. When trouble came, I faltered from a crumbling foundation. My faith was never built on the rock. I was a wayside ” counterfeit birth”.

My bitterness flashed before me. I harbored bitterness against those who I thought had wronged me. I suffered clinical depression, the open door of unforgiveness had ushered in a demonic spirit. How on earth is one saved and still having bouts of depression? Where is the power of the cross in that? I was a liar and a fake, the God I thought I loved was just then drawing me to him in my bedroom. I cried, and I cried and I repented in those tears. As I lay in my bed the Lord bought me to Isaiah 53. Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? I had never believed the report that Jesus Christ of Nazareth died on the cross, that gruesome death but rose in the flesh. I never understood myself to be a wretched sinner. I had never understood, that this man Jesus, who was man and God in the flesh had to die in order for me to be saved.

I never knew that the sacrifice of his very life was needed to cleanse. What price can you put on a life? What price can you put on the life of the Son of God. As I read through Isaiah 53 and learned of the suffering servant, my joy became full. I knew why the Lord drew me to him by showing me a constant vision of Jesus on the cross. The work that was done on the cross proved the complete power of God which no devil can match. Christ was dead but now alive in the flesh. The disciples had seen and believed this 2000 years ago, and I was seeing and believing it for the first time. And it was the same power that lifted Jesus from the cross that was now lifting me up.

I believed the report that day. I was grateful for what Christ had done on the cross, for me and for those who would believe on him. I was grateful for his mercy. I was happy and besides myself with joy. God had drawn me. His love was clear to me. My friends, the agony of that cross and the suffering it took to save me was clear. I loved the Lord God for his eternal kindness and saving grace. I deserved nothing, but God through Christ had given me all I will ever need. So then, in my bedroom, after years of church, I was finally saved.

I receive and trust every word that Pamela Sheppard teaches. For she speaks truth, the organized church is a conglomerate of condemned buildings.